Cryptomnesia

self-released;
2009

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The Mars Volta, at both their best and their worst, often sound like several different bands going in several different directions at once. But love them or hate them, no one could ever fairly accuse the group of caving in to critics and abandoning their mission. Indeed, the Mars Volta's main drivers, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, are like id-mobiles stuck permanently in high gear; they'd rather hit a brick wall head on than back up or turn around, to hell with anyone that would suggest otherwise.

Even so, the last thing the ADHD-inclined group would appear to need is another distraction. But apparently Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's scattershot ideas and energies can't be contained in, let alone sated by, one band alone. Since the inception of the Mars Volta, he's kept himself busy with any number of collaborations and side projects, working with such fellow travelers as Lydia Lunch, Damo Suzuki, and Chili Pepper John Frusciante, and releasing a never-ending stream of discs under his own name as well as the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quintet.

El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, as the name implies, is the newest Omar Rodriguez-Lopez project, except that it's really not that new. El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez began back in 2006 when Omar Rodriguez-Lopez hooked up with Hella drummer Zach Hill but has since evolved to include fellow Hella member Jonathan Hischke as well as other members of the Mars Volta, including vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala. For fans of both the Mars Volta and Hella, one imagines news of the collaboration portended the ultimate meeting of the out-of-their-minds.

That Cryptomnesia sounds more or less exactly like the sum of its parts should shock no one. The first publicly released product of the Mars Volta/Hella collision (with supposedly at least two other completed recordings waiting in the wings), Cryptomnesia features about 36 minutes of Rodriguez-Lopez's trademark guitar ejaculations, supported by Hill's thundering, hyperactive drums, with Bixler-Zavala's histrionic vocals piercing the din on nine of the 11 tracks.

On the plus side, the bulk of the tracks barely reach the four-minute mark, tempering Rodriguez-Lopez's tendency to wank around until he runs out of time or tape (whichever comes first). A few songs, such as "Half Kleptos" and "Paper Cunts", even attain some semblance of a groove. Yet between all the samples of dialog interspersed throughout the disc and film-referencing song titles such as "Noir", "They're Coming to Get You, Barbara", and "Warren Oates", the album recalls less the prog dinosaurs that the Mars Volta are always compared to and more John Zorn's crazed hardcore cartoon jazz outfit Naked City.

Except Naked City at least had a sense of humor and kept the changes coming so fast and furious it was easy to get caught up in the frantic nature of it all. El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, on the other hand, don't favor such concision, and, breaks between outbursts such as the aforementioned "Cunts", "Elderly Pair Beaten With Hammer", and "Warren Oates" aside, they essentially amount to variations on the same song, one long suite that might as well be a single track. Admittedly, one man's indulgence is another man's ambition, but not only does it sound at this point as if Rodriguez-Lopez can barf out stuff like this in his sleep, but at his rate of productivity he may be doing just that. Awe is in the ear of the beholder, sure, but after being predictably pounded into the ground for half an hour by Rodriguez-Lopez/Hill et al. and their bag of heavy tricks, it's hard to tell if we're meant to walk away impressed or oppressed.